Do you care what happens next?

I just finished reading a piece on the possibility of using heavy particle "time markers" in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to determine whether a Big Crunch preceded the Big Bang. The Big Bang or Big Crunch? Revealing the beginning of the universe from astrophysical signals.This is not about the physics, which, like most modern physics, I cannot follow far past analogy. Give me that old Newtonian universe! A 3-rail bank shot is about the best I can do. Word of caution: my browser goes mad at that site, apparently under ad attack, and I somehow posted 4-5 duplicates of my reply to a comment, shown below. I'm posting the exchange--his overweening despair and my pompous defense of knowledge--in the interest of full disclosure. This thread isn't about that, either.What I want to know is whether or not you care how the world ends? Whimper into the cold dark? Crunch and bang? Crunch and out the other side, making a helluva good universe next door let's go?If you don't care, do you have a preference? I don't mean a preferred scientific theory, either, but a preference based on esthetics, philosophy, spitefulness, your mood today or whatever.There's no rush.
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Is it pointless, or just without a point? The final analysis of all the *time markers* still leads to an inevitable dead end, the point at which the search for the answer is merely a circular path of reasoning within the limits of observation.

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To what end? Even if there were a final answer, what then? Is it useful in any way? Extrapolating Drake and Fermi postulations, the answer is a rsounding NO. The answer of our beginning, and our end, carries no weight or meaning whatsoever.

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In the cosmic scale, we and all that we may divine to know is no more important than a pissant striving to understand past/present/future. There is no real gain to either pursuit. Knowledge of that sort is not power, it is the source of madness.

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Posted by: Picard, James | January 25, 2016 at 01:34 PM

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Surely declaring any knowledge useless before it is gained is a greater madness.

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The greatest human miseries spring from ignorance: dissipating ignorance is in itself a good.

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At the most trivial level, the pursuit of knowledge empowers human capabilities to reduce suffering and increase pleasure in myriad ways.

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You impose a pissant's perspective on human endeavor and knowledge while claiming an infinite vision of human possibility. Your own hubris contradicts your assertion.

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Posted by: Omni | January 25, 2016 at 03:27 PM

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No problems here. That's likely because I use "noscript" with firefox. Not really, except for a little idle curiosity. Homo sapiens will go extinct far earlier than that. And unless we start doing something about global warming, there will be more urgent concerns.

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The answer of our beginning, and our end, carries no weight or meaning whatsoever.

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Whoever said this couldn't be more wrong. Those answers carry all of the weight. Sure, figuring out all the stuff in between is where the fun is but in the end, when we face our demise, what other questions really carry any weight at all? Certainly I would like to know just as a matter of interest. I mean what else do you have going on that is more important than the end of the world? Especially if it is going to end...tomorrow. Even if it is a couple billion yrs out when our sun swells up a bit why wouldn't you want to know? I am comforted by the knowledge that the sun has a bit of gas left in her.Of course there is considerable doubt about how far out we can really see. So knowing how the universe might ultimately end really won't matter if we get smoked by an asteroid or boil over while we're not paying attention.I don't really have a preference as that seems a little presumptious. I imagine that it would be pretty cool to look back on 100 billion yrs of recorded history and achievement. Evolving into some ethereal being that really had the option of lasting forever.Edited by ProtoTypical, : tious

Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost

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Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

It does, and with some of my favorite Frost: you have to suspect he favored the ice. I'm asking in part because, to my surprise, I find myself preferring the possibility of a continuing journey; not mine, particularly (I'm already tired), just someone's.Is this what moves deists?I've always thought mortality a blessing for the individual and a necessity for evolution. I wonder, should we find the universe rife with intelligent life, like an emergent property of matter, if atheists like me might not have to ask altogether different questions than we do: not about gods, more different than that.I surprised myself with my emotional response to the question. I appreciate your reply.

I agree. Philosophically, I of course prefer that the human species continue on forever---or at least until God has another plan for us. I believe it is our duty (and our nature) to learn as much as we can. I am cautiously optimistic regarding our survival. Me too. It brings more meaning to our collective existence to leave some sort of legacy.Edited by Phat, : added thoughtEdited by Phat, : No reason given.

Some humans are not imbued with curiosity. Enough of us are, however, that all of human history has resulted. What’s over the next hill? What’s on the other side of this ocean? What is that hot burning light in our sky and where does it go at night? What does Saturn look like when it eclipses the sun? What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I?If it wasn’t for the curiosity, the questioning, the search for answers, the search for knowledge, we would be nothing better than cows grazing on the open plains.Your Mr. Picard may see knowledge of our universe’s origins, future, ends, as powerless and yet these questions had the power to spur all of human development from that first moment some monkey looked to the night sky in wonder.I have to agree with Mr. Picard’s view that this is the source of madness, however. Most of human history has been madness, hasn’t it.For me personally, a great internal itch that nags the back of my mind would quiesce knowing these answers about our universe. No, that knowledge would not make me rich, get me laid or solve global warming, but it would give me some internal comfort, a bit of calming peace like when a tough job is finally done well.I have always liked the idea of a cyclical universe. Even if it is trillions upon trillions of eons after the last photon finally flatlines out of existence in this universe, I find a bit of satisfaction that another quantum fluctuation, or our neighboring brane-world bangs into ours, would flood our universe with energy again precipitating yet another inflationary-big bang or whatever. It just appeals to me. Whatever the case may be, cyclic or not, the most satisfying piece would be the knowing.

Yes. Exactly.I joked here a little while back that I hoped against a cyclic universe because I never wanted to watch another GOP debate. Since then, an unsettling 'that's just not true' has simmered in my back brain. Human history, yes, but not most individual humans. I think individual madness is nearly always a failure of our primitive wet hardware...a bit of bad protein that raises the dickens in our heads.Aren't our mass insanities more a function of the drive to own and master than the drive to know? Ahab wanted to master and destroy Moby Dick, not to know and understand him, or to make a friend; both are human, but I think the latter closer to the norm.Why do I care? That's what I'm wondering. Not for the first time, you're helping to explain myself to me better than I can. That's why I asked the question here. I can think of no better place to take it.

deleteEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't expect to be there. And with any luck humans will be extinct by then. So no, I don't care much. The way we feel when we pull off a good bank shot, I expect that that's how physicists feel when they discover crunchy bangs.

Ha ha, what a bum Here's his main punchline: This assumes that Mr. Picard has objective knowledge that "in the cosmic scale" things like "real gain" have any meaning.He cannot possibly have this knowledge, and his ignorance of that fact is telling of his arrogance.
Or, if he understands a way to find such knowledge... not supporting such a pathway leaves his argument to rot.He does, however, have a point. That point is this:How the universe ends billions of years from now is not going to physically affect the state of affairs we find ourselves in currently.This point is valid and true. But, note that it is very specific. To take this point and expand it with such all-encompassing language as "...carries no weight or meaning whatsoever." Is simply wrong.When you talk about "meaning" or "caring" or other such things, you're discussing human feelings.
Your personal human feelings are not the same as everyone else's.It's quite possible that such future knowledge would have no effect on James. However, that says nothing for Tom, Dick or Sally.He's basically taking a personal, subjective view and then claiming that it's objective and unavoidable for everyone else.
And that's just silly.How silly it is becomes obvious if we continue his vein of reasoning:The state of the universe's ending billions of years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe billions of years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe millions of years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe thousands of years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe hundreds of years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe 10 years from now has no meaning to anyone today.
The state of the universe tomorrow has no meaning to anyone today.Obviously people care about tomorrow.
And, obviously, the overall "amount of care" will decrease as the time-frame is moved further and further into the future.
That's just how people are.However, to state that you can somehow confirm that this "overall amount of care" must, definitively reach zero for any imaginable future reference point... implies that you can, somehow, actually give a numerical value to this "overall amount of care." I'd like to see that calculation, it would make for good toilet paper Besides, as AZPaul3 has shown us, all anyone has to say is "well, I'm curious about it and I would like to know" and James Picard is forced to retreat into attempting to bully others into his position rather than relying on valid facts."It matters to me, I care." Is all anyone has to say to be absolutely proof-positive that James Picard is just plain wrong.
A reason for caring isn't even required... "caring" is not dependent on other people approving of your feelings Edited by Stile, : Messed up tags

Whoops, I forgot to even answer your questions Yes, I care.I care in the sense that I find it interesting and I would like to know.I don't care in the sense that I worry about the safety of my family and friends, though. My preference fluctuates on the sorts of human interaction I happen to have witnessed recently.Sometimes I see so much pain and hatred that I think things would simply be better if this whole place just shut down permanently. No consciousness, no objects, no nothing.Sometimes I see so much joy and fun that I couldn't bear to think that such things must have an ending, no matter how far away in the future. Such experiences should be available in some form, forever.I hope I'm never put into such a position that I have to be the one who chooses

I think you've definitely sorted Picard's argument in your first post. Thanks for the reply here.A little imagination suggests other limits to his point.While what happens in that far-off future isn't going to affect us physically, conceivably what happens now could affect what happens then and after.In a cyclic universe where information isn't destroyed in singularities--neither all that outlandish as cosmogynic outlandishness goes--the state of affairs now, and how the universe ends billions of years from now, could shape the next expansion.I'm not not yet content to accept the insignificance of any event in this universe. If a cyclic universe routinely gives rise to constants inducive to sentience, you have to wonder how dynamic the role of sentience may be in that cycle.But I also refused to believe my first Easter ducky was dead, so you can take all that with some considerable salt.

Hi, Faith.I didn't see what you've deleted, but I hope you will still respond to the topic. I was looking forward to your response.I understand your answer will be framed by your religious faith. I'd still like to hear it.Edited by Omnivorous, : .

Mostly I apologized for not getting the question for some reason, for my obtuseness about it. You care about something, you find yourself being emotional about something but I'm not exactly sure what. It must be about humanity's fate but the way the question is posed it is so bound up in the fate of the physical universe it confuses me. I'm sure I'm just having a senior moment but if I can't figure out the question I can't answer it. Do I care what happens next? Well of course, but I care about humanity not the enormous cold physical universe. Sorry for my obtuseness. If you can clarify the question for me maybe I can respond to it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.